Iran’s Supreme Court has acquitted a group of men charged over a series of gruesome killings in 2002…The vigilantes were not guilty because their victims were involved in un-Islamic activities, the court found. The killers said they believed Islam let them spill the blood of anyone engaged in illicit activities if they issued two warnings to the victims.

Illicit according to whom? Illicit under what and whose definition?

According to their confessions, the killers put some of their victims in pits and stoned them to death. Others were suffocated. One man was even buried alive while others had their bodies dumped in the desert to be eaten by wild animals. The accused, who were all members of an Islamic paramilitary force, told the court their understanding of the teachings of one Islamic cleric allowed them to kill immoral people if they had ignored two warnings to stop their bad behaviour. But there was no judicial process to determine the guilt of the victims in these cases.

And even if there had been, would it then be standard procedure to hand the guilty victims over to an Islamic paramilitary force to be tortured to death?

Now the Supreme Court is reported to have acquitted all the killers of the charge of murder on the grounds that their victims were all morally corrupt.

Well aren’t we all. So let’s hope this fashion for letting vigilantes murder morally corrupt people does not catch on.

One point I notice in this horrific story (aren’t we deluged with horrific stories, from Virginia and everywhere, these days?) is that these splendid fellows acted on “their understanding of the teachings of one Islamic cleric.” From what I know of Islam, religious authority in it is radically decentralized, compared with Christianity. One cleric can issue fatwas, etc., completely independently of everyone else. Apparently this is one big problem in developing a “moderate Islam.”

[Ir] But this is nowhere nearly as bad as the evil, degenerate Western-contaminated Israelis who are continually oppressing the Palestinian peoples, and their corrupt henchmen, the vile BBC reporters, one of whom has met his just desserts for spying on behalf of the godless Americans in Gaza ….

Excellent post. Thank you. I also worry that our disgust with the Bush admin sometimes leads us to remain silent about criminal behavior in the rest of the world, including horrible things done in Muslim countries.

My basic attitude on that is very simple: Bush is our president (god help us). We have a responsibility to ourselves and to the world to set things straight when our guy is incompetent and is doing awful things. Nobody else can throw Bush out of office. We have to do it.

In case it isn’t obvious by now, we have basically no leverage over Muslim countries. We have to accept the things we cannot change and change the things we can. Cliche? Yes. But it’s true in this case. Or, if you prefer, remove the beam from our own eye. Something like that.

“The Basij, or Baseej paramilitary volunteer forces, come under the control of the Revolutionary Guards. They have been active in monitoring the activities of citizens, enforcing the hijab and arresting women for violating the dress code, and seizing ‘indecent’ material and satellite dish antennae.

I wonder if the vigilantes who did these despicable acts belong to above group? If so it would be understandable as to why they got off lightly.

Well, I would point out one of these lovely true believers did assassinate a Prime Minister a few years back? You alson get the state building massive walls across city neighborhoods and “legalizing” settlements.